Books like The Undefeated
By Kwame Alexander
For families who want a picture book that speaks history and pride out loud, this poem gives children a foundation of Black excellence and endurance to stand on. reverent, powerful, poetic — a read that asks for stillness and attention
A biography of Wilma Mankiller, who was forced from her Cherokee Oklahoma home as a child, found community in San Francisco, and returned home to become the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation.
A musical girl from small-town North Carolina, born Eunice Kathleen Waymon, grows into the singer Nina Simone — her sweet voice rising into a thunderous roar of protest during the Civil Rights Movement.
A determined young dancer in the 1930s and 40s trains for ballet despite discriminatory schools, then refuses to paint her skin white for a company's offer — and rises to become the Met Opera's first Black prima ballerina.
A boy in Punjab, born with weak legs that kept him from playing cricket or walking to school, grows stronger year by year on his family's farm and eventually runs marathons at over one hundred years old.
A girl in Hawaiʻi who feels neither wahine nor kane sets her sights on leading her school's boys-only hula troupe in a traditional kane chant.
A fearless young woman falls in love with flying after her first airplane ride, then defies people who scoff at her dreams to become a pilot with the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II.
An original poem celebrates girls and girlhood in all their forms, honoring how girls have shaped history while calling them to stand together and march boldly into the future.
Two sisters wake before sunrise six days a week to practice tennis, pushing through boos and taunts from a sport that didn't expect them, on their way to becoming legends.
A young left-handed girl picks up her brother's guitar, flips it upside down to play it her own way, and by age eleven has written "Freight Train," a song the world would come to know.
A mistreated girl mocked as Sootface by her cruel older sisters sets off to try her luck with a warrior who can only be seen by someone with a kind, honest heart.
A picture-book biography traces Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s path from a childhood in the segregated South to becoming a minister and civil rights leader, told through his own powerful words.
A folk hero grows so fast he bursts through the porch roof, then grows into a legend — swinging two sledgehammers to build roads and racing a steam drill through a mountain.
